POWELL: MODERATION AMID DIVISIONS

By LINDA GREENHOUSE, Special to the New York Times

Published: June 27, 1987

WASHINGTON, June 26—
For a decade and a half, Lewis F. Powell Jr. sat at the center of an often polarized Supreme Court. While any vacancy on the Court carries the potential for significant change, Justice Powell's retirement on the eve of his 80th birthday creates a particular void, in tone as well as substance.

Justice Powell was the Court's balancer and compromiser, a thoughtful judge whose vote could rarely be taken for granted but who was widely regarded as open to the persuasive power of any lawyer's best argument.

His vote was crucial in key areas. On affirmative action, he often joined narrow majorities that thwarted the Reagan Administration's opposition to most race-conscious remedies to discrimination. On religion, his opinions drew fine lines between church and state. On abortion he remained committed, with a shrinking majority, to the 1973 precedent that established it as a constitutional right. Tone of Moderation

Asked at a news conference today to name his most important opinion, Justice Powell replied that it was probably the Allan P. Bakke case, the 1978 ruling that invalidated a racial quota for medical school admissions but kept the door open for affirmative action. With the Court otherwise deadlocked 4 to 4, he wrote the key opinion that defused, at least for a time, an explosive issue.

Although that performance was typical, Justice Powell's legacy lies not so much in any one opinion as in his overall approach, a search for consensus among deep divisions, a tone of moderation in a period when discourse, both within the Court and around it, was sometimes shrill.

His departure comes at a critical moment for each of three major institutions of Government: for the Court itself, one year into the stewardship of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist; for a politically troubled Presidency, determined to make judicial conservatism its lasting legacy, and for the Senate, where a tenuous Democratic majority lacks a consensus on the role of ideology in judicial confirmations.

Justice Powell's own judicial career exemplified the vagaries of Supreme Court nominations. Selected by President Nixon as part of his effort to reverse the liberal legacy of the Warren Court, Justice Powell, a corporate lawyer and leader of the Virginia establishment, soon made it clear that he fit into no neat category. A Sparing Use of Power

He is a political moderate with an aversion to heated rhetoric and ideological rigidity. As a Justice, his principal guidepost appeared to be a deep respect for the Supreme Court as an institution, which carried with it both a commitment to guard the Court's independence and a determination to use its power sparingly.

He never confirmed this publicly, but seemed at times to be troubled and even offended by some of the Reagan Administration's aggressive efforts to use the Court to advance its political agenda on abortion, civil rights, aid to parochial schools and other matters.

At the height of that period, in mid-1983, he wrote an opinion for a 6-to-3 majority that affirmed the Court's continued support of its landmark abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, which the Administration had asked the Court to overturn.

His tone was acerbic. The doctrine of judicial adherence to precedent, he wrote, ''is a doctrine that demands respect in a society governed by the rule of law.'' He added: ''We respect it today, and reaffirm Roe v. Wade.'' Usurping Legislative Roles

Justice Powell's belief that the Court should take a limited view of its powers sprang from two sources: his respect for the role of the states within the Federal system and his conviction that policy choices should be made by the people's elected representatives rather than by Federal judges tenured for life.

A concurring opinion in a 1974 case, U.S. v. Richardson, expressed his sense of judicial restraint as clearly as anything else he wrote. The Court held that a taxpayer could not bring a suit challenging the way the Central Intelligence Agency was financed. He wrote: ''We should be ever mindful of the contradictions that would arise if a democracy were to permit general oversight of the elected branches of government by a nonrepresentative, and in large measure, insulated judicial branch.''

He dissented on similar grounds from the Court's 1972 landmark ruling, Furman v. Georgia, which invalidated the death penalty as it then existed. He said the Court was usurping the role of Congress and the state legislatures.

Justice Powell also saw the Court as an occasional counterweight to excess or shortsightedness in the other branches of Government. Two years ago, he provided the fifth vote to strike down a Federal program that paid for remedial instruction in parochial schools. ''There remains a considerable risk of continuing political strife over the propriety of direct aid to religious schools and the proper allocation of limited governmental resources,'' he wrote in his concurring opinion in Aguilar v. Felton.

Justice Powell provided the key vote in a long series of cases that set limits on Federal aid to parochial schools and, in the process, defined the constitutional boundaries between church and state. He drew fine distinctions, approving some programs and invalidating others. Sensitivity to Education

''He was the one who continued to take thin slices of the salami,'' Jesse Choper, dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley and a specialist in this area, said in an interview today. ''The eight others knew exactly where they were. I always had a picture in my mind of everyone else looking to Powell and asking, 'Well, are we alright?'''

Justice Powell brought a special sensitivity to cases involving public education, the result of long service on local and state school boards. He was head of the Richmond, Va., School Board from 1952 to 1961, a period of resistance to the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation decision.

Under his leadership, the Richmond schools were integrated peacefully. After his Supreme Court nomination, a group of liberal Democratic senators issued a statement praising him as ''one of the courageous men in Virginia'' during that troubled time.

A trial lawyer who graduated from Washington and Lee University and Harvard Law School, he was active in the organized bar. As president of the American Bar Association in 1964 and 1965, he lobbied vigorously for an increased Federal role in providing legal services to the poor.

From 1938 until he took his seat on the Supreme Court, he was a partner in the Richmond law firm now known as Hunton & Williams. He and his wife, Josephine, whom he married in 1936, never cut their ties to Richmond, where Justice Powell said today that he hoped to spend more time.

In his gentle way, Justice Powell sometimes told people he resented his frequent characterization as a swing vote on the Court; he believed the phrase denoted someone who wanted to see which way the wind was blowing before making up his mind.

In an interview with Bill Moyers, broadcast on public television Thursday night, Justice Powell was asked how he expected to be remembered. ''I couldn't possibly speculate on that,'' he replied. Very few Supreme Court Justices ever become household names, he noted, adding:

''I think certainly in the long reach of history I may be a footnote somewhere, but that's the most I would expect.''